Fiberglass Fender Eliminator

Ever since I got this bike I've been wanting to clean up the way the back of the bike looks, mainly at the license plate and the extra large rear fender.

My bike is in excellent shape for it's age so keeping it stock looking...or very close to stock looking is the best idea here. Cutting the stock fender is completely out of the question, I want to keep it in perfect shape should I ever change my mind and want to bolt it back on.

What I did was first remove the rear fender and cleaned it up as good as possible with dish soap then dried it off completely. The stock fender IS the mold for the fiberglass so it gets a generous coat of silicone grease to act as a mold release.



I did wipe off most the grease after the pic was taken... it just needs to be a real thin coat.

Post edited by: Wicked_KZ, at: 2005/10/22 23:35

Next thing to do is coat the inside of the fender with resin and have several pieces of glass cloth cut into 3" by 3" squares and ready. I cut the glass into smaller paices so they follow the contours way better than fighting one big piece. the pieces overlap eachother and get their strength that way.

After I got the glass about 5 layers thick it's time to let it set up for about an hour and gently work it out of it's mold. this is best accomplished before the glass gets rock hard... you Want it flexable at this point.


You can see the road dirt that i missed in the cleanup embedded into the glass.. it just looks bad but won't effect the strength or looks of the finished product... I promise :whistle:

Post edited by: Wicked_KZ, at: 2005/10/22 23:05

Here's another view of the new fender...

And the inside view...



This thing is still very flexable at this point so it can be trimmed with scissors easily...

here it is painted black next to the stock fender, you can see how alike they look now...

Here's a top view of the new fender next to the original... Almost an exact duplicate.



You can even see the part number and the "made in Japan" that was cast into the original fender perfectly molded into the fiberglass one...

here it is installed on the bike... looks just likt it did before...

here's a quick side view...

.... And with the seat installed after doing the final trimming on the new fender to keep it completely hidden from view...

Here's a view from under the bike... you can now see just how much had to be trimmed off the new fender to keep it's new look clean...





The red arrow points to the un protected area that I'll fix by cutting a piece of aluminum and making a small filler panel so debris and road grime can't be slung up where I don't want it to go.

Post edited by: Wicked_KZ, at: 2005/10/22 23:32

Here's the new rear view of the bike, the license plate was raised a full 2 inches from it's original position but it still looks like it came that way from the factory. next step is to remove the stock turn signals and replace them with some flush mounts on the original mounting tabs...

here's a "before" pic to show what the rear looked like stock, you can see the appearance is much cleaner with the rear fender "eliminated".